Sissel Tolaas: The Stories of Smell, Revisited

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Hi, I’m Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of StoryTelling. Welcome to the FoST Podcast. Today we’re re-releasing an episode with Sissel Tolaas, a Norwegian chemist, artist, linguist, and a leading expert in smell. We often overlook smell, but according to Sissel, these invisible molecules carry remarkable depth and precision of information. They shape how we communicate, how we remember and how we feel. As she puts it, smell is an invisible alphabet for storytelling. Sissell brings her research to life through art, collaborating with institutions like the Cooper Hewitt, the Venice Biennale, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to name just a few. From analyzing the smell molecules of ancient ruins in Pompeii to extracting hidden stories from garments in museum archives, he work reveals that the air around us is alive with stories both past and present. So take a deep breath. Now let it out. This is the Future of StoryTelling. Please enjoy this episode with Sissel Tolaas.

Sissel, welcome to the Future of StoryTelling podcast. So happy to have you here.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Thank you very much. Very thrilling to be on this talk with you, looking forward.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Sissel, I thought we’d start at the beginning. Tell us about the origins of smell.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Before there was anything, there was a smell molecules. The first way of communicating on planet Earth and beyond was through chemistries. Chemical communication was the first way of communicating between bacteria and beyond. And this is still the case. Chemical communication is taking place all the time, full-time, all over with everything, anything that’s kind of alive.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

How is smell different from other senses?

SISSEL TOLAAS:

You breathe all the time. Every breath contains smell molecules that bypass the rational part of the brain and immediately trigger emotion and memory in the hippocampus part of the brain. And this is a quality that smell have that’s very different from the other senses. Most of the other senses enter the rational part of the brain before it then end up in the subconscious part of the brain and in the hippocampus at all.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

So it actually is more root to your sense of emotions. You’re not even consciously thinking about your smells.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Exactly. It is the director entering to the emotional part of the brain. And also not only do we have sensor in the nose, the whole body have sensors. Smell molecules enter the metabolism and the brain from all directions. So air is surrounding us all the time full-time. So all this information gets into our system and subconsciously we are informed about what’s going on long before we see it, long before we hear it. Also, the sense of smell is the oldest sense we have and the most primer. Without the sense of smell and breathing, we will not be. When you start to understand its complexity and the diversity of possibility, it’s just like, wow, an endless movie. It’s what life is about in a nutshell.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Sissel, you’re so unique that you bring so many disciplines to everything you do — science, linguistics, art. Tell me a little bit about the work that you do.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Yeah. So in the beginning I started this journey towards the invisible and I didn’t know what to study for what kind of purpose. I knew that process was my product in the end of the day. I was aiming for something but not really knowing exactly what it was. And it was for me, kind of a wake-up call to discover chemistry. By doing experiments in the lab at the university, I discovered that there is something going on in the air that I need to understand. Definitely I have to study chemistry because everything is about chemistry. But if I’m heading towards something unique and something unknown, I need to also find a way how to talk about it. So linguistic become the second field of my interest and my knowledge. And then I ended up again back to my biggest passion, which is life. So how can I combine and do research on what life is in terms of air and breathing and molecule?

I cannot do this research just sitting in a white cube laboratory and doing experiments on red sanosis. I need to be where life happens. So the only discipline there is where you have freedom to be is art and creativity. So I use art to perform my research. I ask the question in my lab. I bring the question out to reality using museums, gallery and institutions, education to post those questions and try to find the answer. I work at the Metropolitan Museum reactivating archives that’s been asleep for centuries. I work in Pompeii to reactivate molecules from the past in the soil and the dust of the ruins and so on and so forth. So trying to bring the knowledge, trying to use and show that there isn’t scientific knowledge that can be applied beyond the comfort zone of many, many disciplines. And I’m a master of making it uncomfortable.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

That’s a great way to market yourself. I’m very good at making it uncomfortable for everyone. I feel almost embarrassed to say that smell is probably the sense I’m least articulate around. It’s the one that I think about the least and I think I have the most trouble identifying, trying to describe — so much more focused on what I see and hear and touch. And yet you’re reminding us that it’s this foundational, original and incredibly powerful form of understanding the world. I was taken by an expression that I’ve heard you use before, which is “the molecules are the alphabet of the air.”

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Oh yes. Oh, yes. Again, I ended up with looking into how to talk about what I do and comparing to other type of system of communication and since molecules is literally my letters– that’s how I replicate, reproduce and then communicate with the world since 30 years– literally I do air writing. I use molecules to tell the message and I don’t add on with words what they try to say. And only since neuroscience have provided so much more information about sense-perception, sense-preservation, sense-understanding, we are now finally able to understand that not only on sense or two senses are essential for survival and this is how life start. You start off with equipped with amazing software or devices on your body called the senses and you use all of them simultaneously and you scream with joy and playfulness and that’s when you learn. Learning in the context of using the senses and that’s where we lost track.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Let’s go back to this idea of it being the most powerful sense for emotion. I know that probably starts with our connection with our mother. We can smell our mother before we can see her. There are these things that are so core about smell. And so as you say, powerful in terms of listening emotion. I mean, this is a podcast about storytelling. I think every storyteller is trying to create an emotional response or take their guest on an emotional journey. Why do you think it’s that none of us are using smell as part of our toolkit?

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Because smell were always seen as a very private, intrinsic personal thing. So why pay attention? That’s the beginning of that problem. Now, especially after the global experience of what COVID did to all of us, we were in something together where its main topic was invisible matter, airborne, aerosol, breathing, so on and so forth. So something was going in the ear that caused our senses to suffer. Now or never, we have the opportunity to rethink how do we talk about what? I think smell — nothing is more honest than a smell. So why not? In a world of conspiracy and fake news, and you name it, I say it: How do we code our frustration? How do we code our emotion and our intention of saying something unique in a different way? Could we start to send out molecules to each other? The way once upon a time we used abstract molecules to tell the world that the gas is leaking.

That’s a smell code and the world had to learn that language. That smell means the gas is leaking. That’s a smell code and that’s for me, amazing.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Just to explain that so people understand what you mean, gas has no smell and people had to add a fragrance or a smell to it so that you would know gas was leaking.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Absolutely. And not just any kind of — definitely not a fragrance — not any kind of smell. The smell molecules essential here molecule had to be abstract, having no references whatsoever. The only reference had to be the gas is leaking. So that smell could never, should never be abused and that is still the case.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

A warning. It’s a warning sign.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Exactly.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

I love the idea. I don’t think I’d ever thought that somebody designed or curated that collection of molecules that we know as gas.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Natural gas don’t smell. So this kind of coating has to be abstract. So the first reference is the only one that is then applied and be the reference for the rest of time. And that’s how the brain work and that’s how smell work in general. The first time you smell something is what you remember. That reference is what you remember for the rest of your life unless you really want to change that reference.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Do you think that we are trained to be observant to smell? I feel like I have lost or underdeveloped. My smell muscles are atrophied. I don’t know if they were ever strong, but in the world we live in today, it seems to me that one of the senses that is easiest to overlook.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Yes and no. It’s like with anything on the body and beyond. If you don’t train your muscles, they also decrease the function. And I think we should start with education. If we implement the senses and specifically the sense of smell into the curriculum in primary school, like we have it in kindergarten, you learn how to use the senses properly and you start off in life with using all the senses to take in information. Yeah, why not start with our kids? And learning later on is always tricky with anything. But again, if you do it and if you start to discover what the sense of smell is capable of doing, you will never go back to looking at things in the same way. What smell does, it really embody you with the topic of concern. It’s all over your body and that is quite unique and also a bit scary.

In picture, you can just go away from the picture and then some remain, some of the pixel remain in your memory with smell. It go down, deep down, stay in your subconscious memory for the rest of time.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Tell us a little more about how you try to unearth or the sort of archeology of smells.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

To start properly, it’s required that you have some access to chemicals, to chemistry, to the alphabet, so to say, to be able to do this professionally. If you start with education, if you start with implementing that type of knowledge into primary school or in school in general, there can be developed tools for this kind of purposes in more sophisticated way. And now the situation is that a few have access to this, including myself, and I try to do the work with smell in a unique way because of that. I don’t just perfume spaces. I carefully try to understand what is going on before I add on or remove something.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

I’d love to learn more about your collaboration with the Met around the project, Sleeping Beauties. What was that?

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Yeah, so I was commissioned to be on board with the conservator at the moment they decided to choose these items that were part of the beautiful exhibition that had to do with archival material and fragility. And in my case, not only fragility in terms of falling apart and difficult to see, but also fragility in terms of chemistry and toxicity and so on and so forth. So what I was there to do was to show, okay, maybe you cannot see the original item the way it once upon a time was, but the information hiding under the skin of the item might be as interesting and maybe even more interesting. And maybe those molecules reveal the real truth about this item and that’s what I did. I did the smell recording with my advanced technology and showed them these molecules give indication of the life that been lived in these items.

And I think it’s about time to show and make the audience have access to this and trigger the experience of the items in a new and different ways. You could smell the molecular interaction between the molecules that was going on continuously within the garments and the objects on display. So suddenly, you add on to at one dimensional thing, you added on this three dimensional embodied experience and it became amazing.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

So you went and you sort of forensically studied the molecules in these rare and precious pieces of clothing and fabrics. What was one of the most surprising things you learned that maybe counter to what people had understood about the item?

SISSEL TOLAAS:

I had a dress was given to the Met, 1912. That dress was worn by the same person that gave the dress to the Met. The dress was so fragile it nearly could be taken out of its case in the archives. And when I did the molecular study, I was mind blown because it literally been on hold ever since because of the topic of fragility. And what I found was literally the person had animals, most likely a dog. The particles, the volatile, the molecules, they gave indication that she liked fish, that she probably ate fish products or whatever and that she was a smoker. So all these molecules, they replicated, reproduced, I embedded the smells on the wall. So you had the dress carefully laid out, but the amazing conservators that did such an amazing job with this fragile and material and items. And then you walked up to the wall and you touch literally the skin of the person that had been wearing the dress and it was amazing. Putting up this wall and giving this homage to life was also a statement.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

So basically you were able to reveal the story of the woman who’d worn the clothing almost like a ghost telling its tale, this idea of a kind of archeology or forensics around smell. Tell us how that applies to the work you do in Pompeii.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Similar. Again, beyond the conventional way of doing excavation, you have the archeologist, the geologists and various other experts in the field. I’m one of them. We are out in the field, we are approaching the excavation. Everybody’s like, “Oh, what is this all doing here? Why are you have showed small devices? What’s going on? We know our profession. We don’t need any…” And I said, “Listen, can I have the chance to show you what I’m doing?” So the only one that really get my message is the geologist. So he tell me, “Sissel, let’s develop a sign language. So when I go down the strata, I show you this and design and you will come with your device, literally your Malcolm cleaner and soak up the molecule that I reveal when I enter into the strata of the 79 AD and it was the most incredible moment of my life.

And it was just this everybody was breathless. “What did just happen?”

CHARLIE MELCHER:

So were you smelling, were you breathing the same air that people who were alive during the time of that volcano had breathed?

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Exactly. And of course just the fact, listen, the fact that I was there making the archeologist and the other expert aware — actually we are breathing when we are doing the excavation. We never thought that breath and air information can also provide essential information and be added to the protocol we are trying to do about the site. So all this not only I show what I found, but also kind of trigger and make the archeologist a little bit uncomfortable with the status quo of the profession like, “Hello, did you ever think about that? That invisible information that’s hiding in the volcanic soul and the volcanic storm full of air bubble might have information that can change your story.” As I said before, nothing is more honest than a smell. It’s real stuff. It’s real life.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

It’s just amazing to think that you can unearth air that has been saved and not been touched for hundreds of years and it reveals a truth. It reveals some story.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Air is a shared endeavor. We all contribute to it and we all need it. We all should care for it. We are still smelling those molecules from Pompeii and beyond. We are now with the knowledge of the 21st century capable of catching some of that air and understand what that is. It’s not that abstract anymore. And again, back to COVID is a very good example of awareness and wake up call that the senses is there for a purpose and not only looking at the world and sometime listening to the world is essential for survival.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

I couldn’t agree more with you, by the way. I’m a huge proponent. Anyone who’s a regular listener to this podcast knows how much the idea of embodiment means to me and how important I think it is as part of the future of storytelling, that we are going through a period now where we’re becoming reconnected to our body, where storytelling is no longer going to be just to our eyes and our ears, to a passive audience, but rather something that we experience in a more multisensoral, full-bodied way. So I also use that word embodiment all the time and it’s part of the reason why I’m so fascinated by your work and your career, because I think you do have so much knowledge to share for those storytellers who are looking to create more embodied and emotionally powerful experiences. I know you’ve also designed molecules that can make people cry or have strong emotional response to things.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Exactly, exactly. Again, looking into what smell can do and what the molecules are capable of doing, these molecules have capacity beyond imagination. And also among others, this molecule I developed for Tate Modern was the purpose of the molecules to look into, can we make people cry without doing harm to them in literal way? Of course, this molecule then activates tear, but what the consequences was that suddenly you activated also the psychological part of crying. So I have people still reaching out thanking me for opening the bucket, so to say. Yeah. So this is all of my research looking into functional molecules. What can the molecules actually do in your brain and your body? I have molecules that help me fall asleep. I have molecules that make better quality of sleep. I find molecules that protect me in the world of commercial application is all about astraction.

Can we use the smell to tell the world, leave me alone. Can we use the smell to say, come to me, listen to me? Can we use the smell to say, oh, I agree without having to say the word. And I’m working on something like this at this very moment.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

I mean, this seems like an extraordinary tool for storytellers. If you could create molecules, smells that elicit people to feel love or trust or fear or remember things more. I mean, if you really can design chemical smells that are going to create these kind of emotions, what a powerful tool in the hands of storytellers to augment the messages that they want to convey.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

We need to challenge what it means to be. And I think the main purpose of what I do is try to bring back confidence to everyone. We are all equipped with this amazing deal called the body and the senses one way or another. And I think it’s about time we start to scale down and reuse it for the purposes was meant to be there. I think joy, playfulness is essential for the story we have to tell. Challenging what it means to be, what it means to be with all these amazing devices we are equipped with. Use it properly. Suddenly the world look differently and you don’t have to look at the screen every day. You don’t have to look at this bad news. You can try to understand it beyond the image.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Sissel, your work makes me have new meaning for the phrase, stop and smell the roses and you make me want to slow down and to become more conscious of what I breathe, what I smell.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Stop and smell Sissel.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Stop and smell — well, I think that is one of your messages. If we smelled each other more, if we could have that kind of closeness and intimacy, I think it would solve a lot of problems. Instead, we want to stay away.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

We just have to change the rules. We have to change the agenda. We have to change the curriculum. And we have to do it now or never. Otherwise, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And in terms of the senses, if we don’t start to use the senses more properly, soon they will go extinct anyway. With your muscles, if you don’t use them, they also don’t function. And I think doing small exercises around the senses and discover, rediscover what it means, taking in information in multiple ways more than you normally would. It’s now the right moment to do that and I don’t think it’s that complicated.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Sissel, it’s a joy to speak with you, to learn from you and to marvel at the various projects, the range and creativity of the projects that you work on. Thank you so much for joining us at the Future of StoryTelling and I look forward to us being able to have some smells together at some point.

SISSEL TOLAAS:

Yes, yes. Let’s build up air alphabet.

CHARLIE MELCHER:

Once again, I’m Charlie Melcher. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the FoST Podcast. If you’re a fan of our show, please be sure to check out my new book. It’s called The Future of Storytelling: How Immersive Experiences Are Transforming Our World. It’s available in stores and online wherever books are sold. And I invite you to join our community by becoming a FoST Explorer. To learn more about the FoST Explorers Club, please check out our website at fost.org. The FoST Podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partners, Charts & Leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong and story on.